Poster #51 - An Examination of Growth in Social Drinking Norms and Their Relationship with Adolescent Drinking

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Developmental Psychopathology

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Although perceived drinking norms have been repeatedly associated with adolescent alcohol use (Borsari & Carey, 2001), few studies have examined their development or mechanisms that may account for the strong relationship between norms and drinking (Geber, Buamann, & Kilmmt, 2017; Mollen, Rimal, & Lapinski, 2010). The current study uses Bandura’s (1978) theory of reciprocal determinism to examine growth in perceived drinking norms and alcohol use across adolescence and reciprocal relationships between descriptive and injunctive norms and alcohol use. According to reciprocal determinism, alcohol-related cognitions, such as descriptive and injunctive norms, and alcohol use should reciprocally influence one another through a dynamic learning process. Alcohol use shapes social norms, and social norms predict alcohol use, thus reinforcing each other over time. Although reciprocal determinism is a theory of individual change (Bandura, 1978), to date, studies have only assessed reciprocal determinism at the between-person level. Our data analytic approach (Latent Curve Models with Structured Residuals, LCM-SR) allowed us to distinguish between- and within-person associations. Accordingly, LCM-SR allowed us to assess reciprocal determinism at the individual level consistent with the theoretical conceptualization of Bandura and avoided biased parameter estimates of reciprocal associations that often result when failing to separate between- and within-person associations (Curran et al., 2014).

Hypotheses: We hypothesized that (1) descriptive and injunctive norms, and alcohol use would demonstrate significant growth from early through late adolescence, (2) at the between-person level, growth in descriptive and injunctive norms would be associated with growth in alcohol use, and (3) at the within-person level, descriptive and injunctive norms would be reciprocally and prospectively associated with alcohol use.

Sample: Participants were drawn from a nine wave longitudinal study examining early risk factors of the initiation and escalation of substance use during adolescence. The sample included 387 families (1 caregiver, 1 child), was evenly split on gender (N = 205 females, 55%). Most were non-Hispanic Caucasian (83.1%) (9.1% African American, 2.1% Hispanic, 1.0% Asian, and 4.7%mixed ethnicity). The average age of participants was 12.1 at wave one and 19.9 at wave nine.
Methods: Adolescents self-reported alcohol use at waves one through nine and perceived descriptive and injunctive social drinking norms at waves one to three and seven to nine. LCM-SR was used to test reciprocal associations between social norms and alcohol use because it allows for modeling growth (which is important as adolescence is a dynamic period for growth in both norms and alcohol use), but also disaggregates within- and between-person associations. All models controlled for age and gender.

Results: Findings were consistent with our hypotheses such that univariate LCM-SR models demonstrated significant growth in alcohol use, descriptive norms, and injunctive norms from early through late adolescence. Bivariate LCM-SR demonstrated consistent within-person reciprocal associations between descriptive and injunctive norms and alcohol use after accounting for growth in norms and alcohol use. Consistent with the notion of reciprocal determinism, personal level of drinking played a role in shaping social norms, perhaps through selection into social groups that support drinking, and norms in turn, influenced drinking.

Authors

• Samuel N. Meisel, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
  Presenting Author

• Craig Colder, University at Buffal
  Non-Presenting Author